Vaegan Seminar Series 2025
In 2025, SOVS hosted nine amazing presentations from eight influential speakers, and many of the presentations were enjoyed face-to-face on campus at UNSW Sydney’s Kensington campus.
In February, Zali O’Dea provided attendees with an up close and personal look at facial disfigurement and the challenges those with living with disfigurement face in the everyday community.
In March, our very own Dr Kathleen Watt (UNSW) provided a novel educational perspective on strategies to support student development of clinical capabilities in optometry.
In June, Prof David Mackey (UTAS) presented a novel position that just like how eye colour is tied to genetics, diagnosis and assessment of different types of eye diseases will likely involve reference to genomic data as part of everyday clinical practice.
In July, Dr Benjamin Tag (UNSW) provided a detailed look at human computer interaction (HCI) with examples related to vision science using virtual reality, particularly the interactions between the effects of technology on emotional experiences and vise versa.
In August, Dr Anthea Burnett (UNSW) presented on the Vision Atlas and how it empowers stakeholders across sectors to turn data into action and drive progress towards universal capabilities for improving eye health.
In September, Dr Alan Blood (UNSW) working in the field of optics and imaging showed attendees how a thin strip-stop can be used to block pencil beams at variable angles using a small sliding mirror to generate Darkfield images that have luminous internal detail in the axial position, or higher resolution in the peripheral position.
In October, Prof Zhaoping Li (Max Planck) provided some very compelling insight into the role of central-peripheral dichotomy in the general human perception. A number of illusions were presented to support the proposed position for the role of top-down processing and feedback in static visual perception and localisation.
Our final Vaegan for 2025 was presented by Dr George Enninful (UNSW) who showed how homoarginine—a non-canonical amino acid— can be incorporated in place of arginine residues in Mel4 to generate sustained retention of antimicrobial activity against S. aureus and E. coli.
